Science suffers from a lack of leadership. The science community can be blind at times. He offered up powerful insights on the communication of science, but scientists were basically blind to him.
I weighed in last week on the environmental site Ensia arguing that, yes, Crichton did bad things in promoting the anti-environmental agenda in his final decade, but before he was bad, he was good. All the way up to Steven Spielberg - they listened and respected him when he spoke. Sagan was fun, but he was a doofus that I remember Johnny Carson making fun of constantly. Michael Crichton was better than Carl Sagan when it came to science communication. The last line of that chapter said it all for Ovitz, “I miss him every fucking day.” Ovitz wrote an entire chapter about Crichton in his autobiography that came out in 2018. Michael Ovitz, who was probably the best businessman Hollywood has known in the past five decades, ran Creative Artists Agency which represented Crichton for most of his filmmaking career. People like climate blogger Joe Romm essentially dumped hydrochloric acid into his grave with an “obituary” titled, “Michael Crichton, World’s Most Famous Global Warming Denier, Dies.” That was in 2008 when the derogatory term “denier” was first being suggested for climate skeptics.īut Crichton was incredibly smart, charismatic, and widely liked by all who knew him. In the final act of his career he turned against the environmental movement resulting in his death having a fair amount of “good riddance” vibe to it. Michael Crichton was a giant of a man, both figuratively with all his writings, and literally with his enormous height of six foot nine.
Michael Crichton’s final interview with Charlie Rose in 2007: Two old friends, both sadly headed to ignominy. But that said, the science world is still guilty of an enormous MISSED OPPORTUNITY for communication caused by the myopia that always plagues scientists in the subject of climate change. Yes, he eventually wrote an unforgiveably bad novel about climate and deserved rebuke for drifting into a camp that was beneath him. It was criticized from both the left (“You implied the science community made him into a climate skeptic” – yes, the science community wore him down), and the right (“You called him the divisive, insulting label of ‘climate denier’” – yes, the editors changed my label of “skeptic” to “denier” - boo hoo).īelow I list 5 main sources I’ve drawn on for insight on Michael Crichton’s climate experience. Last week I published this article in Ensia about science fiction author Michael Crichton.
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